Every decision in a pre-season is downstream of one date: when you next play a game that counts. How much running, how heavy, when to sharpen, when to back off. All of it is arithmetic from round 1.
Without the date, a plan is just a list of sessions.
Two of those have a guide of their own: the post-season reset, and where the off-season build starts.
Off-season builds the engine. Pre-season 1 builds strength and running volume on top of it. Pre-season 2 turns that into speed while the total volume comes down, because club training is rising at the same time and the two have to add up to something survivable.
The striking part, if you lay the phases side by side, is how little the exercise list changes. A squat appears in all of them. What changes every phase is the reason you are doing it, which shows up as the sets, the rep range and how close to your limit each set lands.
Same squat, different job.
There is a reason to treat it as one rather than as a start line.
Across five amateur Australian football clubs over a season, injuries came to 27 per 1,000 player hours, they were most commonly sustained at the start of the season, and hamstring strains were the most common injury of the lot. Gabbe B, Finch C, Wajswelner H, Bennell K. Australian football: injury profile at the community level. J Sci Med Sport. 2002;5(2):149-160. PubMed 12188087. This is 1999 data from one code in one state, and men's community football at that, so it is old and narrow. It is also the best published description of exactly this population, which is why it is here rather than a tidier study of professionals.
You do not get fit during the season. You arrive fit, or you spend the first month catching up while everybody else is already playing, which is both the least enjoyable month of the year and the one the injury data points at.
The pre-season is the part of the season nobody sees.
You enter your round 1 date during the assessment and the six phases are computed backwards from it and forwards through finals. Move the date and the whole structure moves with it. Every phase boundary is a default you can change.
The phase table, and what each one actually programs, is on how the plan is built.
Footy Ready builds this into a plan around your dates, your body and the gear you actually have. The assessment, your whole season across all six phases, and one real session generated from your own answers are free.
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